"Watch It: The Risky Promises and Proming Risks of New Information Technologies for Education"
Many kinds of classroom "technology" become ubiquitous after a certain point, like white boards or televisions. Teachers don't ask themselves if this technology is good for teaching. "Familiarity of [these] objects, materials, and practices makes them reletively invisible to us as 'technologies'." The computer has reached this same point and should be treated as such. "The key issues concern how [computers] are used, by whom, and for what purposes." "For better and worse" computers have become indespensable to teaching, because the computer has become indespensable to our culture.
"Technological change is a constellation of what is chosen and what is not chosen; what is forseen and what cannot possibly be forseen." We can't know or even guess at all the myriad outcomes that result from even one change in technology. (pg.2)
"Information" Technology
The term "Information Technology" (IT) is inadequate for a number of reasons.
(1) Most people assume they know what "information" is. Most info online is "paretial, biased, or simply false." "Information is never 'raw.'" "It is always 'cooked'...filtered, interpreted, and extracted from a background set of assumtions that are implicit in the information itself." (pg.3)
Meaning the information comes with a set of ideas upon which it was based. It is a concept of reletivity, where every interaction with the information somehow modifies it: the collection method, the recording process, the transmission medium all filter the information in one way or another. LIke Quantum Physics, where the act of observing a particle changes the particle.
(2) "The new technologies we are most interested in here (computers, Web pages, the Internet) cannot be understood simply as information technologies. They are also communication technologies."
(pg.4) Bruce & Levin's Taxonomy for Information Technologies: Inquiry, communication, construction, and expression.
Using the Internet is not like consulting an encyclopedia, a static print source formed by an appointed group of experts. Today hundreds of individuals ask questions, communicate together to construct the definitions used by the digital generation, then publish these observations online, in formats that not only allow for changes and updates, but require them.
(3) "These new technologies constitue not only a set of tools, but an environment -- a space, a cyberspace -- in which human interactions happen." "More and more the Internet is described as a 'public space'," a "collaborative environment". (pg.4)
In the same way that teachers wonder about how best to use their classroom space, they should think about how to use their online space.
Teachers must also be aware that these "public spaces" can be dangerous places to teach and learn. They are wild and uncontrolled social arenas, which makes the teaching of critical thinking a vital tool for every teacher, of every age group. Skepticism and questioning must be a part of every curriculum.
Information "Technologies"
Conventional ways people talk about technology:
(1) Instrumental View: technology is a tool, something "to accomplish a specific purpose", "a fixed object with a use and purpose." (pg.5)
(2) Relational View: "Tools do not only help us accomplish purposes, they...create new purposes." (pg.6) "Tools change the user," and "acquire new, unexpected uses and have new, unexpected effects."
"We never...use tools, without the tools also 'using' us." This "two-way relationship" is demonstrated when we realise, "Our bodies, our health, the physical environment in which we try to survive, are altered as well," by the tools we use.
"New technologies affect the ways that we think about our physical selves as well." There are so-called "disabled" runners with artificial legs that allow them to run faster than their "fully abled" counterparts. (pg.7)
The Effect of Technology on Society
"Choices about technology use always stand in relation to a whole host of other changing practices and social processes." It may be these "changes that have the greatest overall impact in changing the society, not the 'technologies' themselves." If this is the case, then educators must make themselves aware of these changing social processes so they can adapt themselves and their curriculum to them, as well as help their students adapt to them. (pg.8)
Technocratic Perspective on Technology
In the past, technology has been seen in terms "benefits and costs to be weighed against each other." (pg.7) This is demonstrated by the different ways in which technology use have been framed:
(1) Computer as Panacea: computers will alleviate all the problems of schools - overcrowded classrooms, overworked teachers, etc
"Many problems of education are the rusult of inadequate resources." "Funneling more of the finite amount of funding available into one area of spending might actually exacerbate these problems, not remedy them."
"The history of education in the United States can be traced from technical innovation to innovation, from gimmick to gimmick, from reform to reform." (pg.8) Before I started at Napa the school district had spent tens of thousands of dollars on the "Whatever It Takes" program, presumably a teaching style wherein the teacher takes a more active role with individual students. They bought materials, sent teachers to conferences in other states, and so on. Within two years that program was over due to Program Improvement and a new set of reforms was in place. There was a great deal of bitterness caused by the amount of money spent on the program.
"When the revolution does not come to pass...there is typically an equally exaggerated rejection of the reform...because it falls short of the hyperbole marshaled in its favor."
"We are already seeing some of this backlash toward computers and related technologies." "The panacea approach reinforces a certain naivetè in educators...by suggesting to them that spending money to acquire new technical resources solves more problems than it creates. In reality, the potential of new technologies increases the need for imagination, careful planning, and coping on the fly with unexptected new challenges."
(2) Computer as Tool: computers are merely tools which can be used for good or bad purposes.
This approach "simply errs in the opposite direction from the first." "The tool perspective places too much faith in people's abilities to exercise foresight and restraint in how new technologies are put to use. It ignores the possibilities of unintended consequences." (pg.9) since we cannot know what ripple effect new technology will have, it is shortsighted in the extreme to assume they will not happen. The first reel of "2001" is a prime example: ape-men are driven from their homes by stronger primates, but they learn to use clubs as weapons, which makes them stronger. The unintended consequences is that they become tool users, their brains increase in size, they begin inventing new tools and so on. Also they become a more violent race.
The core principle of the Technocratic Society is that the use of technology is optional. But as has been said before, this is no longer the case. Computers are ubiquitous, and will be used by students whether they are in the class or not.
Post-Technocratic Perspective on Technology
"The computer [is a] non-neutral tool." "Every technology carries within it certain tendencies of how it is likely to be used." "Users should be reflective and critical, therefore, about the unexpected consequences of using these technologies, and should be prepared for the possibility that the benefits gained from the technology's usefulness may be tempered by unforseen problems and difficulties created by its use."
This is still a varient of the technocratic dream for a number of reasons:
(1)"The technocratic mindset maintains a clear distinction between the conception of a tool and the aims it serves. The 'computer as non-neutral tool' perspective represents a transitional step away from this."
"People's conception of what constitutes 'success' is changed in light of the means used to pursue it." We won WWII in part because of the use of the Atom Bomb, which led to the nuclear arms race and the capacity to destroy the world. "The technocratic mindset takes the relation of means and ends itself as a given." "Thinking beyond thecnocracy meanse seeing the means/ends relation itself as an artifact of a particular cultural and historical formation." (pg.10) "The pursuit of 'success,' defined as the effective and efficient attainment of specific goals, needs to be situated in the context of a less linear conception of actions and outcomes, intentions and effects." I AM STILL UNSURE WHAT THIS MEANS.
(2)"Rethink the calculus of costs and benefits as a way of evaluating change." "Acknowledge that there are unintended consequences, to which values cannot be ascribed because they cannot be anticipated. "Acknowledge multiple consequences that may be difficult to isolate from one another or evaluate separately. Acknowledge that costs/benefit assessments are a matter of imperfect approximations, not a formal calculus."
So what they are saying is that we must open our minds to look at more dimensions than just the flat analysis of what's best for us. We must see "decisions as more than an issue of tradeoffs or pros and cons." "Pros and cons for whom, wihin what time frame, relative to what other goals and values?" Again the reletivity of the situation must be understood and taken into account. (pg.11)
The Obstinancy of Circumstance
"It is not only the problem of unintended consequences, multiple conflicting consequences, and short-term versus long-term consequeences. It is the problem of a web of contingencies, caught up in complex relations or interdeterminance. It is the obstinancy of circumstance, refusing to give people what they want without also giving them what they do not want." (pg.11) I love this quote, because it helps us understand the situation by personifying these unseen quantum connections between events.
(3) "The assessment of means and ends, the weighing of costs and benefits, also assums that people can distinguish and evaluate the 'good' and 'bad' aspects of different aims and consequences." "The very same effects can be regarded as 'good' and 'bad,' depending on other considerations, or when evaluated by different people, or when judged within alternative time frames." "Post-technocratic...thinking...would stress the limits to human foresight and plannning; the interdependency of multiple consequences; and the problematic attempt to sort out 'good' from 'bad' outcomes."
Post-technocratic thinking stresses "the inseperability of good and bad in all complex human circumstances and the error of imagining that we can readily evaluate such matters individually and discretely."
The trick here is that when people figure this out, their first thought is often one of fear and defense: if it can do bad then get rid of it, it's too strong, it's too dangerous. "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. " Gerald Ford This ignores the good that the thing can do.
The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown
"These observations...apply to the field of new information and communication technologies especially" for a number of reasons: (pg.12)
(1) "The field of information and comunication technologies is changing at an extremely rapid pace." Moore's Law = the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every two years, meaning the processing power of machines doubles every 2 years.
"These areas of innovation feed back on themselves." "The increasing capacities of machines, programming languages, and other software hasten the development of still further innovations." "This self-reflexing character makes it especially susceptible to defining its problems and goals hermetically, as technical objectives of value in and of themselves, apart from clear consequences for human society generally." (pg.13) We look at these technical problems and challenges as hurtles to pass, without looking at the overall affect these technological triumphs have on humanity.
(2) "All new technologies...change people's understandings of whta they can do." They are "continually reinventing the perceptions of [their] use and purpose."
"When those technologies refer to the material with which people imagine, plan and evaluate change -- that is, information -- there arises a strong likelihood that what falls outside of the readily available raw material will fall outside the decision itself." (pg.13) NOT SURE WHAT THIS MEANS
(3) "The various considerations about information and communication...press an even more radical conclusion about the indeterminancy of effects." "The future lines of development are literally inconceivable [because] new developments in information and communication technologies are uniquely also new developments in our imaginings of capabilities and goals."
"Reflections upon new information and communication technologies must proceed with a profound modesty and caution. They are, literally, dangerous." (pg.14)
Conclusions
"These considerations leave us with two overarching impressions about the debate over new technologies in education up until now:"
(1) "There is the tendency to want to frame these matters as a debate...[which] tends to polarize and dichotomize the 'good' and 'bad' dimensions of change." "It tends to entrench views." (pg.15)
"Most of all it reinforces the policy perspective of cost/benefit analysis, where the 'responsible' third perspective is to respect and balance off the respective pluses and minuses, and not, as we have argued, to see their more complex and disturbing interdependencies." The reason for that is it is very difficult to make a decision if you take reletivism too far. We can't know all the outcomes of our decisions, so it's best not ot make any. There must be a balance point when we are looking at these matters, and that compromise tends to lead us back to cost/benefit analysis.
(2) "Decisions about new technologies and education have been, we believe, especially susceptible to hype and perceived immediacy based upon a sense of what others are already doing. Research on new technologies for teaching and learning should tell us more about their multiple effects (intended and not)."
The overall concept of this article is that we need new kinds of research. They must look not only at what effect a single piece of technology has on a single class of student, they must look at how the same technology effects other students exposed to it, students who do not have access to it, students who have access but lack the background, ability or inclination to use it effectively, other schools who may want it but can't have it, and so on. New research methods are needed to follow the threads of these quantum interconnections.
Many kinds of classroom "technology" become ubiquitous after a certain point, like white boards or televisions. Teachers don't ask themselves if this technology is good for teaching. "Familiarity of [these] objects, materials, and practices makes them reletively invisible to us as 'technologies'." The computer has reached this same point and should be treated as such. "The key issues concern how [computers] are used, by whom, and for what purposes." "For better and worse" computers have become indespensable to teaching, because the computer has become indespensable to our culture.
"Technological change is a constellation of what is chosen and what is not chosen; what is forseen and what cannot possibly be forseen." We can't know or even guess at all the myriad outcomes that result from even one change in technology. (pg.2)
"Information" Technology
The term "Information Technology" (IT) is inadequate for a number of reasons.
(1) Most people assume they know what "information" is. Most info online is "paretial, biased, or simply false." "Information is never 'raw.'" "It is always 'cooked'...filtered, interpreted, and extracted from a background set of assumtions that are implicit in the information itself." (pg.3)
Meaning the information comes with a set of ideas upon which it was based. It is a concept of reletivity, where every interaction with the information somehow modifies it: the collection method, the recording process, the transmission medium all filter the information in one way or another. LIke Quantum Physics, where the act of observing a particle changes the particle.
(2) "The new technologies we are most interested in here (computers, Web pages, the Internet) cannot be understood simply as information technologies. They are also communication technologies."
(pg.4) Bruce & Levin's Taxonomy for Information Technologies: Inquiry, communication, construction, and expression.
Using the Internet is not like consulting an encyclopedia, a static print source formed by an appointed group of experts. Today hundreds of individuals ask questions, communicate together to construct the definitions used by the digital generation, then publish these observations online, in formats that not only allow for changes and updates, but require them.
(3) "These new technologies constitue not only a set of tools, but an environment -- a space, a cyberspace -- in which human interactions happen." "More and more the Internet is described as a 'public space'," a "collaborative environment". (pg.4)
In the same way that teachers wonder about how best to use their classroom space, they should think about how to use their online space.
Teachers must also be aware that these "public spaces" can be dangerous places to teach and learn. They are wild and uncontrolled social arenas, which makes the teaching of critical thinking a vital tool for every teacher, of every age group. Skepticism and questioning must be a part of every curriculum.
Information "Technologies"
Conventional ways people talk about technology:
(1) Instrumental View: technology is a tool, something "to accomplish a specific purpose", "a fixed object with a use and purpose." (pg.5)
(2) Relational View: "Tools do not only help us accomplish purposes, they...create new purposes." (pg.6) "Tools change the user," and "acquire new, unexpected uses and have new, unexpected effects."
"We never...use tools, without the tools also 'using' us." This "two-way relationship" is demonstrated when we realise, "Our bodies, our health, the physical environment in which we try to survive, are altered as well," by the tools we use.
"New technologies affect the ways that we think about our physical selves as well." There are so-called "disabled" runners with artificial legs that allow them to run faster than their "fully abled" counterparts. (pg.7)
The Effect of Technology on Society
"Choices about technology use always stand in relation to a whole host of other changing practices and social processes." It may be these "changes that have the greatest overall impact in changing the society, not the 'technologies' themselves." If this is the case, then educators must make themselves aware of these changing social processes so they can adapt themselves and their curriculum to them, as well as help their students adapt to them. (pg.8)
Technocratic Perspective on Technology
In the past, technology has been seen in terms "benefits and costs to be weighed against each other." (pg.7) This is demonstrated by the different ways in which technology use have been framed:
(1) Computer as Panacea: computers will alleviate all the problems of schools - overcrowded classrooms, overworked teachers, etc
"Many problems of education are the rusult of inadequate resources." "Funneling more of the finite amount of funding available into one area of spending might actually exacerbate these problems, not remedy them."
"The history of education in the United States can be traced from technical innovation to innovation, from gimmick to gimmick, from reform to reform." (pg.8) Before I started at Napa the school district had spent tens of thousands of dollars on the "Whatever It Takes" program, presumably a teaching style wherein the teacher takes a more active role with individual students. They bought materials, sent teachers to conferences in other states, and so on. Within two years that program was over due to Program Improvement and a new set of reforms was in place. There was a great deal of bitterness caused by the amount of money spent on the program.
"When the revolution does not come to pass...there is typically an equally exaggerated rejection of the reform...because it falls short of the hyperbole marshaled in its favor."
"We are already seeing some of this backlash toward computers and related technologies." "The panacea approach reinforces a certain naivetè in educators...by suggesting to them that spending money to acquire new technical resources solves more problems than it creates. In reality, the potential of new technologies increases the need for imagination, careful planning, and coping on the fly with unexptected new challenges."
(2) Computer as Tool: computers are merely tools which can be used for good or bad purposes.
This approach "simply errs in the opposite direction from the first." "The tool perspective places too much faith in people's abilities to exercise foresight and restraint in how new technologies are put to use. It ignores the possibilities of unintended consequences." (pg.9) since we cannot know what ripple effect new technology will have, it is shortsighted in the extreme to assume they will not happen. The first reel of "2001" is a prime example: ape-men are driven from their homes by stronger primates, but they learn to use clubs as weapons, which makes them stronger. The unintended consequences is that they become tool users, their brains increase in size, they begin inventing new tools and so on. Also they become a more violent race.
The core principle of the Technocratic Society is that the use of technology is optional. But as has been said before, this is no longer the case. Computers are ubiquitous, and will be used by students whether they are in the class or not.
Post-Technocratic Perspective on Technology
"The computer [is a] non-neutral tool." "Every technology carries within it certain tendencies of how it is likely to be used." "Users should be reflective and critical, therefore, about the unexpected consequences of using these technologies, and should be prepared for the possibility that the benefits gained from the technology's usefulness may be tempered by unforseen problems and difficulties created by its use."
This is still a varient of the technocratic dream for a number of reasons:
(1)"The technocratic mindset maintains a clear distinction between the conception of a tool and the aims it serves. The 'computer as non-neutral tool' perspective represents a transitional step away from this."
"People's conception of what constitutes 'success' is changed in light of the means used to pursue it." We won WWII in part because of the use of the Atom Bomb, which led to the nuclear arms race and the capacity to destroy the world. "The technocratic mindset takes the relation of means and ends itself as a given." "Thinking beyond thecnocracy meanse seeing the means/ends relation itself as an artifact of a particular cultural and historical formation." (pg.10) "The pursuit of 'success,' defined as the effective and efficient attainment of specific goals, needs to be situated in the context of a less linear conception of actions and outcomes, intentions and effects." I AM STILL UNSURE WHAT THIS MEANS.
(2)"Rethink the calculus of costs and benefits as a way of evaluating change." "Acknowledge that there are unintended consequences, to which values cannot be ascribed because they cannot be anticipated. "Acknowledge multiple consequences that may be difficult to isolate from one another or evaluate separately. Acknowledge that costs/benefit assessments are a matter of imperfect approximations, not a formal calculus."
So what they are saying is that we must open our minds to look at more dimensions than just the flat analysis of what's best for us. We must see "decisions as more than an issue of tradeoffs or pros and cons." "Pros and cons for whom, wihin what time frame, relative to what other goals and values?" Again the reletivity of the situation must be understood and taken into account. (pg.11)
The Obstinancy of Circumstance
"It is not only the problem of unintended consequences, multiple conflicting consequences, and short-term versus long-term consequeences. It is the problem of a web of contingencies, caught up in complex relations or interdeterminance. It is the obstinancy of circumstance, refusing to give people what they want without also giving them what they do not want." (pg.11) I love this quote, because it helps us understand the situation by personifying these unseen quantum connections between events.
(3) "The assessment of means and ends, the weighing of costs and benefits, also assums that people can distinguish and evaluate the 'good' and 'bad' aspects of different aims and consequences." "The very same effects can be regarded as 'good' and 'bad,' depending on other considerations, or when evaluated by different people, or when judged within alternative time frames." "Post-technocratic...thinking...would stress the limits to human foresight and plannning; the interdependency of multiple consequences; and the problematic attempt to sort out 'good' from 'bad' outcomes."
Post-technocratic thinking stresses "the inseperability of good and bad in all complex human circumstances and the error of imagining that we can readily evaluate such matters individually and discretely."
The trick here is that when people figure this out, their first thought is often one of fear and defense: if it can do bad then get rid of it, it's too strong, it's too dangerous. "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. " Gerald Ford This ignores the good that the thing can do.
The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown
"These observations...apply to the field of new information and communication technologies especially" for a number of reasons: (pg.12)
(1) "The field of information and comunication technologies is changing at an extremely rapid pace." Moore's Law = the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every two years, meaning the processing power of machines doubles every 2 years.
"These areas of innovation feed back on themselves." "The increasing capacities of machines, programming languages, and other software hasten the development of still further innovations." "This self-reflexing character makes it especially susceptible to defining its problems and goals hermetically, as technical objectives of value in and of themselves, apart from clear consequences for human society generally." (pg.13) We look at these technical problems and challenges as hurtles to pass, without looking at the overall affect these technological triumphs have on humanity.
(2) "All new technologies...change people's understandings of whta they can do." They are "continually reinventing the perceptions of [their] use and purpose."
"When those technologies refer to the material with which people imagine, plan and evaluate change -- that is, information -- there arises a strong likelihood that what falls outside of the readily available raw material will fall outside the decision itself." (pg.13) NOT SURE WHAT THIS MEANS
(3) "The various considerations about information and communication...press an even more radical conclusion about the indeterminancy of effects." "The future lines of development are literally inconceivable [because] new developments in information and communication technologies are uniquely also new developments in our imaginings of capabilities and goals."
"Reflections upon new information and communication technologies must proceed with a profound modesty and caution. They are, literally, dangerous." (pg.14)
Conclusions
"These considerations leave us with two overarching impressions about the debate over new technologies in education up until now:"
(1) "There is the tendency to want to frame these matters as a debate...[which] tends to polarize and dichotomize the 'good' and 'bad' dimensions of change." "It tends to entrench views." (pg.15)
"Most of all it reinforces the policy perspective of cost/benefit analysis, where the 'responsible' third perspective is to respect and balance off the respective pluses and minuses, and not, as we have argued, to see their more complex and disturbing interdependencies." The reason for that is it is very difficult to make a decision if you take reletivism too far. We can't know all the outcomes of our decisions, so it's best not ot make any. There must be a balance point when we are looking at these matters, and that compromise tends to lead us back to cost/benefit analysis.
(2) "Decisions about new technologies and education have been, we believe, especially susceptible to hype and perceived immediacy based upon a sense of what others are already doing. Research on new technologies for teaching and learning should tell us more about their multiple effects (intended and not)."
The overall concept of this article is that we need new kinds of research. They must look not only at what effect a single piece of technology has on a single class of student, they must look at how the same technology effects other students exposed to it, students who do not have access to it, students who have access but lack the background, ability or inclination to use it effectively, other schools who may want it but can't have it, and so on. New research methods are needed to follow the threads of these quantum interconnections.